Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun I fought the law and the law won I needed money ’cause I had none I fought the law and the law won.~Sonny Curtis, 1958

I fought the law.

Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that the law and I engaged in standardized testing combat. I like the more generalized sound of fighting the law better, and anyone who has taken the modern bar exam is probably prone to agree that it’s certainly a fight by most definitions of the word.

Yes, the time to discuss the bar exam has come. If this post is like any of the other posts in which I discuss some big exam then it’s probably going to get tons of traffic. Sorry visitors, if you’re looking for some in-depth statistical analysis, or a spirit voyage of metaphorical mountains and life paths, this post ain’t it. Instead I’m just going to talk about the bar exam is, what it isn’t, and what my experience taking the damn thing was like. Mostly because I’ll probably have forgotten all of this crap in no time.

For starters, about me, I am not a shining example of the law student turned bar examinee. Go read through a lot of this blog under the “Law School” category and you’ll find that while I bitch and moan like the best of lil’ bitches, I’m pretty damn lackadaisical about the whole affair. That’s not to say I was always apathetic. Way back in the before times I took the LSAT and I went zerk’ over that shiny POS. Walked away with a 99.9th percentile score and said “Yep, screw that.” Then proceeded to be the most median of median law students to ever grace the hallowed halls of our pompous legal education system.

I’m more about the doing, not the circle-jerking in class and the dumb-ass exams. So I spent most of my time in law school doing and I accumulated a metric shitload of pro bono and client-facing hours, which was awesome and I enjoyed doing. However, the lack of my burning Crusade-tier enthusiasm for the RIGOROUS classroom environment extended to the bar exam when it came time to take that shit. In fact, I was so uninformed about the bar exam that I legitimately couldn’t have told you how they graded the damn thing. Seriously, raw scores, scaled scores? No idea what the hell that shit meant. I took Statistics and got an A+ in it… 6 years ago and have long since purged that information in favor of more important stuff like knowing when the best Steam sales are. To be ENTIRELY honest, I didn’t even know what score I needed to get to pass in my jurisdiction until like one week before the exam. It was that bad.

However, don’t think this is building up to some “I’m so gawd dayum awesome I didn’t even study for the bar because I’m just that kewl and I got a perfect score.” Ah.. no. In truth this apathy meant that I didn’t study as much as I should have, didn’t study as well as I should have, and ended up wasting a lot more time than I should have. In fairness to myself, I had a lot going on at the same time, but anyone can hide behind excuses. The fact of the matter is that I did studya lot, for me – but I basically threw the prep syllabus out the window on day one, ain’t no one gonna do 12 hours worth of shit a day, screw that. Well, lots of people do, but not Taco, he has some Witcher 3 to play since he delayed getting it for two damn years. This was, of course, all well and good until the dark specter of the bar exam got close enough that I could smell its ballsack (the bar exam has savage swamp ass). Once I realized that I’d somehow pissed away like 2 months of time working on unimportant things like preparing to move across the world (you know, totes meaningless stuff) and that the bar exam was only like 14 days away and was prepared to ravage my asshole.

That’s when I entered the “freak-the-fuck-out” stage, which I promptly answered by proceeding to not really change anything and to just ramp up the self-pity and emo darkness. But it sucked. I was scratching my hair out and shit.

I’d have avoided that massive bit of unpleasantness if I’d more proactively scheduled my time. So I’m not about to drop some massive-ass treatise on what to do for the bar exam, but I’ll say that – seriously – make a schedule that works for you. Don’t rely on someone else’s schedule. This isn’t like law school where you steal someone’s outline and pretend you made it because you added one case, make your own damn schedule, save your hair follicles.

This is all to say that going into the bar exam I was feeling a very odd mixture of “LOL DON’T CARE” and “I wonder which countries I can flee to to avoid my crushing student debt.” Maybe everyone feels that way, I dunno, but if so then I’ve been talking to the wrong people. On that note, when it came to talking to people about the bar exam I found myself more in the camp of “SHUT THE FUCK UP” and less on the whole “Let’s discuss estoppel by deed *fap* *fap* *fap*” side. This is why I have no friends and will die cold and alone.

But, it don’t matter how much you beg and plead, time keeps trudging along and before you know it it’s time to take the bar exam. While your exact venue will probably range from “shit” to “shit” you may soon find yourself standing before some massive room in a convention center or other suitable complex of misery, woe, and extremely unpleasant temperature extremes.

Inside you’ll see a variety of setups, but chances are it will consist of somewhere between 50 (Alaska) and 845,192,271 (New York) tables or desks.

My center was on the smaller side, but you get the general gist of it. It is among these wobbly tables and extension-cords-plugged-into-more-extension cords that you will take the bar exam.

But what is the bar exam? No, this isn’t some philosophical question that we shall debate long into the wee hours of the morn’ – it’s obviously a damn test. But like, what does it consist of, other than THE LAW.

Well. Not much. But it’s all about dat’ presentation. So here’s a plain English breakdown.

The bar exam varies depending on jurisdiction. Some states are what are called “Uniform Bar Exam” or S.H.I.T. states. For the purposes of this blog post, we’re going to be talking about the UBE because that’s what I took. If you want to read about a non-UBE state then just search for “Mr. Hands” on Google and I’m sure you’ll find something.

The UBE consists of three portions, spread over two days. There is also a third day in some states that focuses on satisfying some state-specific component of bar admittance, I had such a state.

It’s the first three portions that I’m going to discuss.

***

The first portion is what’s called the “Multistate Essay Exam” or MEE, because it’s uh.. given in more than one state. The MEE consists of a bunch of essays which COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY replicate real life, wherein you’ll face a legal issue and be unable to consult anything but memory to answer the question. Because that’s how the world works, no one gets to reference anything, ever. Thus the MEE is a completely realistic and accurate method of testing your ability to be a lawyer. Essay questions cover topics such as “Conflict of Laws,” “Torts,” “Masturbation,” “Wills,” “Real Property,” “Thermodynamics,” “Contracts,” “Evidence,” “G.I. Joes,” “Constitutional Law,” “1980s Horror Movies,” “Trusts and Estates,” “Why are there 8 hot dogs and only 6 buns,” and “Memomics,” just to name a few. Indeed, the MEE requires a vast array of knowledge.

While specific states vary, in my jurisdiction we had 6 essays we needed to answer. You are given a set amount of time to answer all 6 six essays, and time isn’t called for each essay. Therefore you must manage your time to answer all 6 essays. This can require a bit of triage since you might feel really confident about the “Sex Doll Laws in Soviet Russia” question, but you’ll miss it if you spend too much time on that pesky “Restraints on Alienation” question that came before it. Different jurisdictions grade the essays on different scales, but their all flawed and subjective as hell. For instance I don’t think my grader appreciated all the penises I drew in the margins, and those were some damn fine penises. Regardless of the specific grading scale the jurisdiction uses the MEE counts as 30% of your overall bar exam grade.

The second portion is what’s called the “Multistate Performance Test,” and seriously, what kind of shitty-ass name is that? So like, what? The bar exam is such a shit proxy for actual performance that you have to make a portion of test called the PERFORMANCE test? What the flying fuck. So is the rest of the test just unrealistic, incomparable, improbable bullshit? Oh wait, yes it is. This portion, the MPT for short, is also written as opposed to being multiple choice. However, rather than being presented with some fact pattern and then writing a little essay about it as you do in the MEE, in the MPT you do get some bigger fact pattern and then write a memo or brief or something about it. The MPT is also “closed” in that you are given a bunch of files and stuff that you have to read through, and you needn’t rely on anything outside those files to prepare the memorandum. The MPT consists of two such problems, so it’s like 700 pages long. Since the MPT is “closed” there isn’t a whole lot you can do to prepare for it like you can with the MEE, where a purchase money mortgage question is a purchase money mortgage question. You’re supposed to do like 4 thousand practice MPTs, but no, just don’t. Oddly enough I actually enjoyed the MPT portion of the exam because it was the only portion that seemed to even moderately have a real life purpose, yes I should probably kill myself. The MPT tends to be scored the same was as the MEE on a per-jurisdiction basis and counts for 20% of your final bar exam grade.

The third is what’s fittingly called the “Multistate Bar Exam” or MBE – such an original name. If you haven’t realized by now, the people who make the bar exam have no souls and therefore they just were kinda like “Ya know what, fuck it, let’s just call this the bar exam, bar exam – because we can’t think of some cooler name like ‘Multiple Choice Questions to Render that JD Useless.'” The MBE consists of 75,000 multiple choice questions and lasts for 600 hours – or at least that’s what it feels like. Also like 5 minutes into the MBE someone will finish and you will at first ponder killing yourself, and then them, and then everyone. Each MBE question consists of a bunch of answers all of which might be right, some of which are just more right than others, because where’s the fun in having you know, actual answers. The MBE tests basically every topic under the sun, so I hope you’re well versed in Ancient Babylonian Sheep Herding Techniques, because that is definitely gonna be on the MBE. Also you should probably expect some stupid topic your prep materials told you totally only shows up once every 20 years, because you’ll get 80 damn questions in a row about it and proceed to piss your pants right there in the bar exam as a silent but disgusting protest against the man. The MBE, despite being standardized bologna, is worth an astounding 50 freaking percent of the entire bar exam. So you can do really well on “babby-fills-in-the-bubbles” and utter shit on the MPT, and still pass. Makes a fuck load of sense that does.

Then there is that variable state portion I talked about, which covers topics/subject areas more specific to that jurisdiction. For instance in Vermont there is an entire day about Ben & Jerry’s Law and the Legality of Shooting Leaf Peepers. I’m not going to talk about that day because it’s just too varied. Just know some random stuff like when your state was founded and then proceed to write 15,000 words about why your state is the best state and you will undoubtedly fail probably pass.

Easy as pie – if the pie is poisoned, on fire, and rigged with explosives.

Of course the testing experience is just as much fun as the test itself! You probably have to travel, stay at an overpriced hotel, and then be at the exam center at 2:30am. On the way in you also need to donate a kidney to the bar examiners, but at least they let you pick which one (I’m pretty sure they eat them). Once in line and one organ lighter, you get to go through a variable level of security depending on your jurisdiction. Some places (*cough* Virginia *cough*) make you wear BUSINESS DRESS to this shit, because it’s not bad enough as is. But if you’re like most people and not taking the exam in such a fucking shithole fine example of statehood you’ll probably notice a couple of people wearing pajamas and then the rest will be decked out in paraphernalia for whatever law school they graduated from because vanity knows no bounds. I wore my finest. Which is to say I wore the only outfit I have. Seriously I wear the same jeans and shirt for a month at a time, ask SB.

You then stand in line from 2:35am until about 1:00pm and eventually you’ll make your way to a desk where some proctor whose soul died in World War I will make sure you’re not trying to smuggle some unholy contraband such as a GOD FORSAKEN PENCIL into the exam. There will inevitably be someone who didn’t follow the proper rules on Ziploc bag size and will be shot on site – be sure to step over the pooling blood and cranial fluid, it is oddly sticky. In my case there were uniformed police offers there too, because it’s not like there is anything better they could be doing with their time. Eventually after being stripped naked, anal probed, tazed, shaved, and given a burlap sack you’ll be able to enter the exam room which will either be -100 degrees or 200 degrees, either or. You may even be offered coffee, but that’s just to make you suffer more since you’re stuck in that room and can’t use the bathroom because this is the BAR EXAM and FUCK YOUR BIOLOGICAL NEEDS.

You then get to sit at your desk where you’ll spend the next 400 years. It will either be awkward silence as you don’t want to talk to anyone around you, or someone will try to talk to you and you’ll want to stab them in the face with the pen the armed SWAT team outside stole from you. You’ll sit waiting on everyone else to get signed into the exam room for anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 years. Eventually things will get started and the bar examiners will say a bunch of shit you don’t even care about. You didn’t come here today to listen to some 80 year old lawyer talk about the good ole days, you came to pretend you learned something in law school in order to give whatever institution you came from a brief boost of relevance in a dying world. THEN, after what you THOUGHT were the instructions, they will proceed to start reading you the actual instructions which will take another 5-6 hours and will cover such rigorous topics as “make your marks heavy and dark and don’t chew out your neighbor’s eyes.” However, just when you have figured out how to strangle yourself with that power cord from 1970 that has been strung across the floor with duct-tape, the exam will finally begin.

You’ll then feel a rush of adrenaline followed by alternating feelings of “FUCK YES I AM A LAWYER GOD” to “What if there was a grate at the end of the pipe and Andy Dufresne couldn’t get out?” Those latter thoughts are dangerous because they might cause you to ponder the philosophic question of why you are yourself covered in shit. Eventually time will be called and you’ll have answered somewhere between 0 and 1000 essays. However, since you started late due to the geriatric proctors you’ll have all of like 15 damn minutes to eat lunch. You’ll then be let loose into whatever convention-center type place you are taking the exam in and will see lots of happy smiling people.

Your fellow examinees will be happily chattering about the exam questions, which they know they aren’t supposed to do but they do anyways because they “cleverly” frame them in abstract and obtuse ways. Feel free to kill them if your character and fitness process is already over. If it’s not, just fuck them up real good but don’t kill them. Once you’ve inhaled your meager nutrition you’ll get to go stand in line again. Then you go inside and hear the instructions again. Then you repeat this for the rest of your life until you die.

That is legitimately the bar exam. It’s NOT some super magical awesome right-of-passage “muh fraternity” bullshit. It’s a test that doesn’t really test your abilities in a realistic manner. It’s just some artificial barrier to admission that costs a shit ton of money to take and is tacked onto an already problem-ridden legal education system. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not. Pass rates aren’t going to shit for no reason. But it’s NOT some metaphysical religious experience that tries your heart and soul on your passage to be the SWORD OF JUSTICE. Nah, it’s just a stupid test. If someone tries to argue otherwise, Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A is the answer.

Once the bar exam is over they inform you that it will take sometime between 2 and 4000 months to get your grade back to you, and that they’ll post a pass-list on the internet so that all your friends and family can easily check to see if you failed. Then, sometime after all that, you’ll have to go be sworn in. Depending on your state this will range from really easy, to gawd damn stupidly difficult – because magic words and mythical traditions are important and necessary after all.

In the meantime don’t worry about checking the online portal though, within 3 seconds of the names going live you’ll see all your law school acquaintances that passed posting “Annoying-bitch-of-a-Friend’s Name, Esq.” as their Facebook status. This way people know that they passed the bar exam and are definitely not insecure and dead on the inside and get by only through momentary flashes of pixels which equate to social validation on the internet.

If you’re fortunate like me you’ll have family and friends who leave you the fuck alone and let you tell them if you passed or not. But if you’re unfortunate they’ll be up your ass like wildfire, especially if they are too stupid to realize it’s all be plastered across the entire damn internet already thanks to the board of bar examiners. There is literally a “LOL UR KID DIDN’T PASS” website, thanks family.

However, you might also be fortunate like me and pass. If you did, I offer my sincere congratulations. Since states have different minimum passing scores, “passing” is different depending on the person. I did well enough that I surpassed the minimum score for every single state, that was cool. However, had I passed my jurisdiction by even 1 point, I’d still be happy. Truth is I don’t intend to bop around taking a bunch of bar exams, because holy shit I’d rather be reborn as a 8 year old one on of those ships that sank in the Children’s Crusade. The passing all jurisdictions bit just enlarges my wee-wee and is otherwise worthless.

If you did not pass, then I’m not going to offer my condolences, I’m going to congratulate you for putting up with that shit in the first place. Whether you decide to retake this dumb-ass exam, or move on with your life, I wish you the best either way. For those of you who stumble across this post while waiting on scores, for what it’s worth I thought I was going to fail for the entire waiting period. However, I was going to write the same post regardless. So please don’t feel like this facetious bit of word vomit is just because I passed, it’s not. It’s because this whole affair is stupid as shit and is part of an education system which is even more idiotic. I don’t think it’s really worth a super intensive post without incredulous overtones. So, if you failed, congrats on making it to the other side, even if it isn’t with the result you wanted. You gave it a shot, and that’s worth a fuck-load more than the person who doesn’t have any idea what you went through trying to give you some pep talk about failure (or even better, the lawyer who took the bar in 1947 and totally understands where you are coming from because nothing has changed in 70 damn years, nope). Fuck that. Congrats on what you did accomplish. Now either get back in the saddle or move on to something else, life’s too short to worry about some 200 year old proctor (who is probably a vampire, come to think of it) lecturing you about your damn cough-drops being in wrappers.

Regardless of pass or fail, the final answer is always the same:

Beer.

And that, dear friends, is all I have to say about the bar exam. My apologies if this post wasn’t what you were expecting, but I kind of like the way it turned out. If you need me I’ll soon be doing whatever it is lawyers do.

This is the first substantive post for quite some time here on ole’ Dinosaur Bear, and despite my current residence in Reykjavík I’m actually going to be talking about Albuquerque, New Mexico. See, in order to get to Iceland I need to share a few other stories. The first of which was when Meem, Valentino, and I went on an adventure to Albuquerque – henceforth ABQ because who wants to spell that name over and over.

This story takes us back to July, when I needed to go out to ABQ to take the dreaded bar exam. However, this post is not about the bar exam. So if you weren’t looking forward to that, then you can rest easy (conversely if you’re a neurotic fellow examinee looking for commiseration, come back later when I will devote an entire post to the bar exam). No, this post is just about having fun out in the ABQ sunshine.

For starters you might be wondering why Valentino came with me rather than Tristen. Well, it’s true that Tristen is the law student whereas Valentino is the forestry student. However, we have a bit of a “[D]Rad Rotation” that happens when I go on adventures. This time it was Valentino’s turn to go on a bit of an adventure, as the last time I’d done something with Valentino was my trip to Washington D.C. So when the time came to fly out to New Mexico Valentino quickly wedged himself down into my backpack, which is one of his most favorite things about traveling.

As far as flying goes things went pretty smoothly on the way out to New Mexico (at least for me, Meem had some delays). One nice thing about the trip was that we had booked a hotel right next to where I’d be taking the bar exam.They were even doing some filming right next to the hotel for a forthcoming TV show called “The Brave” – or I guess it isn’t forthcoming anymore. Despite it literally being in the middle of a public forum they told me I wasn’t supposed to take pictures, but fuck you I’m a bus.

The bad news is that the hotel was going through some substantial renovations, though it didn’t end up being that big of a deal in the end. I did find the state of the elevators to be quite funny though. The part of my brain that had engulfed itself with negligence claims and torts had a heyday with the elevators.

You might be wondering why Meem came. Meem wasn’t taking the bar exam, she just came because she plubs me. I invited her, and it just so happened that she needed to go to California for work anyways, so it was good timing. But that is why Meem was there. Speaking of which, when Meem finally made it to our hotel she brought some donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts. Valentino was pretty happy.

In fact Valentino was the first to test out the little coffee maker in our room – a machine which got quite a few uses over the next 3 days.

After Meem had a chance to get settled we went and had dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant since we weren’t wanting to wander too far that first evening. Just a quick trip down the death traps and we were there.

After dinner it was mostly just chilling in our room since I had to get up early and we were all tired from out travel. We did have a good view to take in though (as we marveled at how little traffic ABQ has – it’s crazy really).

After some last minute reviewing on my part we all got tucked into bed right before 10pm, which is nothing short of a miracle considering that Meem and I have been known to feed off each other’s night-owliness and talk until 4am. Valentino is a responsible bear though, so he probably helped keep us in line.

While the bar exam on the whole is a shitty magical fun experience, one nice thing was that since my hotel room was literally like 6 minutes from the bar exam room. Like, seriously, there was a tunnel from our hotel to the convention center where I took the exam (though I didn’t find it until the second day).

Of course there was a legitimately haunted door down in the tunnel that just kept opening and closing itself, over and over – for three damn days. It was made even more creepy because I never saw anyone else in that tunnel and by all accounts there should have been someone in that tunnel as it lead to a parking garage, hotel, and convention center.

Of course besides the haunted tunnel the proximity also meant that I had plenty of time to come back to the hotel room for lunch. So that’s what I did each day. Valentino was always waiting for me, and Meem usually was though sometimes she was off on her own adventures!

Normally “lunch” entailed leftovers from the night before, but that was fine as I generally wasn’t especially hungry. Sometimes I’d have coffee too since they kept it subzero in the exam room. Mostly I’d just use my brief lunch break to look out the window and decompress a bit.

Then in the evenings Meem took me out for yummy viddles and we had an AWESOME vodka drink that I can’t even remember the name of. In fact I don’t even remember if it was vodka. Meem plz halp.

At the place were had the best version of that mystery drink they had some signs in the bathroom that I really liked, especially the bits about “Life’s a bitch, some days it has puppies” and “It goes on” (as does the world).

I think it was that evening that we realized the ice machine on our floor was broken. One of the hotel employees noticed Meem trying to get ice and said he would bring us some ice. Bring ice he most assuredly did. He brought a huge bucket of ice, I think one of those fancy buckets they put champagne in. Valentino approved.

Each day was early for me (and generally Meem too) but one morning when we awoke we got quite a surprise, hot air balloons!

You might have to make it bigger to see them, but they are there! I think there were 4 or 5 in the sky that morning, so nowhere near ABQ’s massive International Balloon Fiesta, which takes place in October and has over 500 balloons each year (making it the largest such festival in the world). Still, for us simple Midwestern folk it was a good way to wake up. Meem sprang forth from bed like a spring chicken.

After the exciting morning it was back to bar exam things, and during lunch Valentino was dutifully waiting for me at my little “Good Mojo” shrine.

The items on the desk deserve a little bit of explaining. Valentino he is pretty obvious, he’s your friendly neighborhood polar bear! The paper also isn’t really anything special, it’s just some instructions for bringing your ticket to the bar exam. I just placed it on my “Good Mojo” table so I didn’t lose it. It’s the dice and pencils which have some interesting backstories. I’ll go in chronological order starting with the Dixon Ticonderoga Black™ pencil on the right. Yes, that is the type of pencil, and yes – pencils are serious. freaking. business.

Now, I didn’t even get to use my pencils on the bar exam. They don’t trust you to bring in your own pencils since you might, you know, scratch the entire 926 pages of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts on your pencil or something. However, pencils are still serious business, and that Dixon is a Gawd Damned War Hero. Its term of service goes way back to the LSAT days (yes, the test that seems impossibly bad until you realize how much worse the bar is). The Dixon has survived several deployments, and I don’t mean pansy-pushing desk work, I’m talking no-man’s-land-10,000-lives-per-yard-trench-warfare of standardized testing. If Pencils could suffer PTSD, that Dixon would have been the star of Apocalypse Now. So, despite being retired like 5 times over, the Dixon came out of retirement to lend moral support to me on the bar exam.

The pencil on the left is an OOLY Ninja Black Wood Pencil™. You’ll notice that the OOLY hasn’t been used. That’s because it’s a ninja. Whereas the Dixon is a morphine infused beach storming sword wielding bad-ass, the OOLY is the tactical assassin who marks bubbles, without even being sharpened. That’s because a true ninja kills not with their lead, but their heart.

Combined, my pencils unleash a hell onto standardized tests that would leave even Lucifer crying like the bitch he is.

Seriously, those pencils are undefeated.

Anyways, as for the dice – those are actually Valentino’s! They come from the HLS Public Interest Auction, specifically the one from my 2L year (which I guess was the last one since they don’t do it anymore for some dumb reason). Now, they weren’t really giving the dice away. This was more of a “Valentino sees dice, Valentino wants dice, dice are now Valentino’s.” Despite being small, Valentino is still a polar bear, and you don’t mess with polar bears (seriously they are huge). So Valentino took the dice. I didn’t really feel bad considering they were dice, there were tons of them, and I had paid $150,000 to be there. So the dice are more of a Valentino talisman. Whereas the pencils are my lucky objects, the Boys use the dice as their lucky objects. So Valentino was adding his lucky to my lucky for some ultimate luckiness.

The bar exam didn’t stand a chance.

Another fun thing about Valentino is that he tended to stay in the hotel during the day, even when Meem and I were both gone. Normally he is an adventurer, but I think ABQ was just a little too hot for him in July and since we were only there for a few days he didn’t feel like trying to acclimate to the weather (can’t say I blame him). So he sometimes got a bit restless when I was out, and by the time I got back for lunch he would end up in weird places.

I seriously have no idea how he got up there, or how he managed to stay up there once he was there.

Speaking of weather, we got really lucky during our ABQ Adventure. We had warm sunny days with amazing sunsets.

One night we got to watch a heck of storm roll in across the desert, which resulted in Meem and I trying to get awesome lightning shots. We failed, though Meem was ultimately much more tenacious than I was about it.

The next day was the last day of the bar exam, so Valentino and I started off with some yummy yogurt from the hotel’s cafe. It was kind of dumb, the cafe didn’t start serving anything beyond basics until like.. way after it opened, then it proceeded to close right after lunch. So breakfast often consisted of yogurt left over from the day before, but I’m not going to complain too much, it was yummy and it was cheap.

Plus, as mentioned, I normally had much more enticing leftovers to look forward to for lunch.

By the end of the three day exam period I think Valentino was ready to spend some more time with Rad and Grandma Reem.

So that evening we had another yummy dinner, and while it seemed like it was going to blow in a storm (I can’t remember if it ever did) we didn’t get rained on during our outdoor feast, and we even got to see a mini rainbow! [There’s a rainbow outside my windows as I write this too, yay! – Iceland gets tons of rainbows]

I really like eating outside, but I’m super picky about it. I don’t like cold, or heat, or humidity, or precipitation. Basically I’m a scrub. However, this was good weather (until the end, when it got windy) and good food.

There was even a family next to us where the girl had a stuffed bunny rabbit with her. Out of respect for their privacy I won’t post them here, but Valentino made a bunny friend.

The next day we got to sleep in, FINALLY! 😀

But not too much. I had a clerkship interview to get to. So I had to Suit Up® and head to the federal courthouse. I realized really quick that my Midwest/New England suit was not well suited to New Mexico summer heat. Fortunately the courthouse was like a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so I was only half dead by the time I got there. I didn’t even up getting the job though, so maybe I hallucinated the entire interview and in reality I was running screaming naked around the courthouse from a dehydrated delirium until I got tazed. Who knows.

After the interview Meem and I decided to have some fun, so we headed out to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center which is a REALLY cool center owned by the 19 Indian Pueblos of New Mexico.

Meem and I had a delicious lunch there before checking out the really interesting museum. We then got to watch a traditional dance, which was one of the big reasons we decided to visit.

During the second dance Meem got a call, or text, or pigeon, something, from the owner of a certain Breaking Bad RV Tour Company. The message? Spots had opened up on the afternoon tour. Meem and Taco Excitement to Overdrive.

We’d originally had tickets to the afternoon tour, but due to the clerkship interview we had to cancel them. Well, then the clerkship time and location got changed anyways, but by that point the tour was sold out. So while I had made peace with not getting to follow in the footsteps of my favorite meth lord I was super ecstatic to get to go after all. So we packed up our stuff, stopped through the Cultural Center’s gift shop for some goodies (Meem got an awesome bracelet) and then headed off to the Breaking Bad tour since we didn’t have much time before it started.

The tour started right near the spot we had eaten dinner at the night before so we were at least conceptually familiar with the area. We got briefly lost but then literally ran into the owner of the tour company as he was walking out of a store and Meem was on the phone with him. Ah destiny! We were meant to be on that tour.

—SPOILER ALERT—

I’m going to take a moment to stop here and say that what follows is a brief recounting of the Breaking Bad RV Tour. If you know me, you’ll know that I LOATHE spoilers with the fury of 1000 dying suns. Legitimately, I abhor spoilers to an unnatural level. As such, I sincerely try to avoid spoiling anything as much as is humanly possible. So I want to warn you that if you haven’t watched Breaking Bad (BB) and/or Better Call Saul (BCS), first, go watch them. Second, I’m going to be as non-detailed as possible with the tour, but by its very nature there are going to be some spoilers. So I’d suggest not reading what follows if you want a 100% pristine take on BB/BCS. Again, I’ll go light on the details, but the photos in and of themselves will sort of spoil something.

Anyways, back on track.

As soon as we walked around the corner, boom, there she was – a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder recreation vehicle and motor home, with signature yellow and orange stripes. The same kind as featured on BB.

Now it’s not the RV from the show, that one is owned by Sony and is actually going to be in the Smithsonian! Yes BB is that good, fight me brah. However, this is literally the same model, so it’s as close as you can get. Plus, other BB tours take you around in a shuttle bus or something, why do that when you can use an RV which replicates the one from the show in exacting detail?

I’m talking, autismo level detail (and I know such details as an autismo myself). Heck, they even got things right that a lot of BB fans forgot about – case in point the crossbow bolt from Season 5 Episode 1.

Meem and I were he first ones to arrive. The owner had asked us to show up early since we hadn’t actually paid and he was just holding our spots on a good faith basis. That was fine, it gave us more time to explore the RV before the rest of the group showed up!

Now, when I say they really paid attention to the details on the RV, I mean that – and not just on the outside, they even recreated the interior!

Yes, there were a lot of props/memorabilia from the show that they had placed inside that obviously weren’t in the show, plus the required stuff like, you know, seats. But on the whole it was a very faithful recreation of the infamous mobile meth lab.

We took the seats that are second from the front on the left side.

Another little detail that the RV had that another tour wouldn’t have dared recreate was a lack of A/C. Yep, just like in the show. In fairness the RV was supposed to have A/C, but they were having secondary generator issues that day. So we got to cruise around ABQ in the summer heat in a 1986 RV. Truth be told, it didn’t bother me in the least. If you were super heat sensitive it probably would have sucked, but when they were moving and we had the windows open it wasn’t that bad. Plus I found the prospect of trudging around New Mexico sans A/C just like Walt and Jesse to be kind of a cool, or rather, neat – cool not so much.

After getting everyone one board we were on our way!

Joining us was none other than the pink bear from Wayfarer 515.

One thing that I really liked about the tour was not only that you got to see almost all the super famous and recognizable places from both BB and BCS, but also some lesser known locales, such as this area which was converted into a Winter-time Philadelphia for Mike to “break bad” in.

Other areas were easier to place in the context of the show, but more difficult to visually match with their in-series counterpart. For instance, I immediately recognized the junk yard, but struggled to think of which angles and areas we actually saw in the show.

Then of course there were those areas which are so iconic that it’s hard to imagine them not being part of the BB/BCS universe and instead as their real-life counterpart.

Yep, mah’ cluckin’ Los Pollos Hermanos.

Los Pollos Hermanos, or Twisters in the Matrix, former dominion of a one Gustavo Fring. We actually got to eat here as part of the tour and that was pretty bad-ass. Twisters is a burger and burrito place, and we had burritos.

In the interest of time you don’t stop at every spot on the tour, some you just drive by such as Wendy’s hotel.

As well as Jesse and Jane’s house.

Other locations you don’t stop at because the owners get pissy and don’t want you there. I guess I can see it from their perspective, but at the same time I find myself having little sympathy – especially for the BCS locations when they already knew that it was going to be a hugely popular.

However, other locations have completely capitalized on their BB/BCS fame. One such example is the car wash from BB.

They have an entire gift shop inside the car wash devoted to BB/BCS stuff. They also tell you to have an “A1 Day” which is pretty neat.

Right across from the car wash is the billboard they used for the first “Better Call Saul” advertisement you see in the series.

I have a special affinity to James McGill, for obvious reasons.

The penultimate stop on the tour was the famous White household. So famous in fact that a quick Google search will yield countless results about visits to the house which range from people raging about the owners being assholes, to throwing pizzas on the roof, to the owners being portrayed as decent people after all.

Since we were with a tour – and the tour operators (who were extras in the series!) seemed to know the homeowners – we didn’t have any issues. It was really awesome to see the actual house, though at the end of the day it’s a privately owned house, so I’m not sure it’s anything I would have went out of my way to see. However, to see in as part of a BB tour is a must, and to do it in an appropriate RV is even better. And no, we didn’t throw a pizza on the roof – that’s a serious waste of pizza.

The last stop on the trip was the Super-Meth-Lab/industrial laundry, which looked pretty damn much exactly like it did in the show, minus you know, the whole super meth lab in the basement (there is no basement).

After that we headed back towards downtown ABQ.

On the way we had a hilarious interaction with another car which requires a bit of story time.

So if you’re familiar with BB at all, you know that blue crystal meth is a huge plot element. Well, ABQ denizens being industrious as they are have created a blue rock candy which they distribute in little bags – and it looks pretty much exactly like the crystal meth in the show (so much so that the TSA has confiscated it from people). They offer these on the tour, you can either buy them or win them via trivia that takes place on the tour (I won a Heisenberg sticker!). So, basically there is this big bag full of smaller drug bags of crystal meth look-alike candy on a ghetto 1986 RV in ABQ.

I noticed as we were driving around that drivers were largely reacting positively to our presence, my guess is that they either know the owners or were glad for the commerce BB/BCS brought to the city. Either way, one car that was next to us honked and there was a little girl in the back seat who was waving at us. So our driver was waving back, but when we pulled up at a stop light he signaled to the other car to roll down their window. After they did he proceeded to throw a bunch of crystal meth bags into their car for the little girl. It was really funny, because it looked 100% legit like a drug deal, complete with the old junker car and the old junker RV. To make matters even better, some of the bags fell on the ground, so they were picking up all this crystal meth candy off the road. The little girl got a kick out of it, plus its yummy candy. Just your friendly neighborhood meth dealers getting 8 year old children addicted to crystal.

In addition to the crystal meth they also had some BB t-shirts for sale and I really wanted one, but they didn’t have any in my size. So Meem and I bought some drugs candy. In the end they ended up giving us some of the bags as well, I think because the A/C was broken and they were worried about Trip Advisor reviews. Have no fears dear tour people, it was an awesome tour even without the A/C.

I give it 11/10 – would have breakfast again.

There were a lot of places we went to that I didn’t share pictures of here just because I tend to type 5000 words about everything and I need to actually do schoolwork at some point. 🙂

There was some sort of festival going on in the square with live music, so we got to hear that while Meem enjoyed some ice cream in this plaza area.

I used the opportunity to go snag an ABQ magnet for our collection.

After that we had some dinner and then made our way back to hotel. I had to get up at freaking 3am to make my flight. Since I wasn’t sure what to expect with my crystal meth I let Valentino carry those since nobody fucks with a polar bear.

Valentino takes his guard duties quite seriously.

I ended up having plenty of time as there were all of like 5 people in the entire ABQ airport (also featured in BB, by the way). However, the TSA in all their boundless genius had 8 employees working on the Pre-Check Line which had no people in it, whereas they had one person for the entire regular line. So while there wasn’t hardly anyone there, the normal line was being processed so slowly you could have measured it in geologic time. I’m not a social person, especially not at 4:30am. But me and my fellow travelers had a lot of self-depreciating laughs at how the TSA had divided up their employees.

The trip home was pretty straightforward. I had a pretty long layover on the way back, but fortunately there were only minimal delays on top of that. Southwest freaked me out at first because their system made some sort of error and displayed a 5 minute delay as five hours for about 20 minutes. It ended up being more than 5 minutes, but nowhere near 5 hours, thank freaking god. Despite having just taken you know, the bar exam – as well as interviewed with a federal judge – I had to get home so I could pack.

Yeah, I had 1 full day between the bar exam and needing to pack to leave my apartment in Boston – no rest for the wicked I suppose. However, that is a story for next time! 🙂

So that was Meem, Valentino, and I’s ABQ Adventure. Meem had some adventures of her own (including a train up to Santa Fe) while I was getting bar exam’d, but she can make her own blog about that. 😛

I had a lot of fun with them, and it was great to be with Meem during her first NM experience! It’s no real secret that SB and I intend to make our way to New Mexico (someday) so it was fun to get to experience it with family! Having Meem and Valentino there made taking the bar exam much more bear-able. 😀

The next post will focus on what happened between the end of the ABQ Adventure and all of us leaving for Iceland, which was an (very busy) adventure in and of itself!

Welcome to Dinosaur Bear! This is going to be a short post (yes, an actual short post from Taco, believe it or not!). Basically I just wanted to post that I have no idea when I’ll be posting next (lol). Well, actually that isn’t true, but more on that in just a second.

I’m getting ready to go through a bunch of changes. The bar exam, job interview(s?), moving (déjà vu), moving again, starting a post-doc program (in another country), and so on and so forth. There are a lot of unknowns in this process which means that I have no real firm timeline on a lot of things (for instance, as of right now I still don’t have a place to live abroad). As such, I don’t know when I’ll have a time to make another Dinosaur Bear post, but rest assured I’ll definitely be generating content for that post whenever it does come.

In fact, on the day this gets posted I’ll be on my way to take the bar exam, which is effectively the beginning of my “blog blackout” period that could last upwards of a month (or longer). However, have no fear, I can guarantee at least one post in the interim. It’s going to be my “Boston Post-Game” post, which, unsurprisingly, covers pretty much the exact opposite of my “Boston Pre-Game” post from (what seems like) a lifetime ago, and is the third subject I talked about posting here.

That next post (which is a doozy, as it covers everything that happened from New Orleans to me leaving for the bar exam) should drop on August 1st and give you something to chew on until I get around to posting about the bar exam, moving, and really starting what is by most accounts a practically new life.

Anyways, if you still can’t believe that I’d write something this short (e.g. a normal sane-person type of post) then I suggest perusing some of the Dinosaur Bear archives. You can either just do a random search (see here if you are confused by wizardry), or go with some of the following suggestions by some people who appear on the blog regularly. I asked Meem and SB to pick a post they really liked (they both ended up choosing two), whereas I asked the Boys to pick some older posts that they thought didn’t get enough traffic or were just silly. I also tossed in a personal pick which I haven’t referenced in awhile and need to follow up on someday (plus a bonus full of some silliness).

Goodness, a lot has transpired since Pig’s Birthday! I just got back from my first trip to the dentist in 3.5 years (and likely last for a few more years) so I figured I’d try to catch up on my blog. It’s kind of a given that my posting game-plan isn’t really going to work out, at least not how I intended it to. So, I figured I’d just lump a bunch of stuff together into a “Spring 2017” post. I guess spring doesn’t technically end until June 21st, but I can always come back and change the title of this post to “Spring 2017 Part 1” if the need arises.

Anyways, as a brief overview of what I’ll be covering today: I’m done* with law school (though not yet graduated), it’s spring, our spring has been mostly cold and rainy so far, Easter happened, Meem visited, I finished my exams/project/paper, and am in the first stages of studying for the bar (in fact I should have started on Monday). I won’t really be covering things in that order, that just so happens to be the order I thought of them.

*done in the sense that I am done with everything I know about – RA or journal work could lurk behind any corner.

Since then, a lot has changed. For one, spring has gotten well.. ok nothing has really changed on that front. It’s just about as cold and rainy as it was over a month ago. Yay May. However, that has not stopped the industrious Pigsten from continuously acquiring more rocks for his collection.

Winter activities which gave way to early spring activities have now yielded to mid-spring croquet (but not roque, thankfully) fields in the Science Center Plaza.

Sure, I was mostly inside double-fisting coffee as deadlines loomed…

…but at least the view of the outside world was nice!

Until it wasn’t:

Yes, it has been a very cold and rainy spring thus far. Heck just a few nights ago (in May) it got down to nearly freezing. That said, the plant buddies have not been too disgruntled about it, Quixote especially has gone a little grow-crazy.

I haven’t done quite as well as the plants. Part of the problem stems from the fact that I have this weird issue when it rains. Actually, I have this weird issue when it drizzles. Basically, if a single raindrop falls someone in a 1 mile radius of me, my pant legs get soaked. No, more specifically, ONE of my pant legs gets soaked. Here’s a good reference picture. Yes, I’ve gotten so annoyed by this I took a photo of my jeans.

First of all. It wasn’t really raining, that was from sprinkling. Yes, sprinkling did that to my left pant leg. Second, it’s not rain dripping off my umbrella due to the angle I hold it. I’ve tested this extensively, plus it happens without an umbrella. So, it has something to do with my gait. Changing your gait in the short term isn’t too hard, but trying doing it for a mile+ straight – it’s easy to revert to the natural way you walk, especially when your body gives you no indication that anything is wrong (like pain). I’ve found that if I walk like a morbidly obese clown-pigeon and purposefully swing my legs out like a cowboy trying to mount hippopotamus that I can somewhat avoid it, but holly hell, it’s annoying. Once I had a client meeting and it was actually raining, not sprinkling. my dress pants looked like I’d dipped one of them into the tub before setting out. It was great. It’s added layer of additional frustration to rainy days for me.

But I digress, yet speaking of fancy things like dress pants – I had my “formal” public interest student closing event at Harvard. Each year the Office of Public Interest Advising has a formal event for students going into public interest work, it’s basically the only fancy closed-door dinner that most of such students will get (either for graduation or otherwise). Or, as one guest put it “This is the kind of dinner you’d have each week if you’d gone to a firm.” What made it especially swanky was that it was held at the Harvard Faculty Club, a building that I had passed by many times but never (been allowed to) entered.

The event overlapped a bit with my Thursday evening class, so I had to bop out of that a bit early and head over. The dinner was pretty nice. It started with free booze, then a surprisingly painless group photo (family photos are infinitely worse), followed by a fancy dinner. Our seating was random, or maybe it wasn’t, but it appeared random to us. I ended up sitting right next to HLS’s Dean, Martha Minow, who is stepping down as Dean after this semester (which also happens to be HLS’s 200th anniversary. Harvard itself is 381 years old in case you were wondering, the law school didn’t exist as an independent entity until 1817). I also got to attend her “last lecture” later on. Anyways, dinner was nice and considered of a several course meal. Valentino conveniently showed up right around the time the fish came out.

He stayed for the berry dessert too, of course. In addition to food and booze (though they never brought me coffee, still bitter about that) there were a few “set” speeches, but then they just opened the mic up to public interest students. It was pretty cool – though I still like to limit my social gatherings. 🙂

Another nifty thing that happened is Easter! We normally try to do something for the Boys and this year was no exception. As we don’t have a lot of money to spend on basket things (nor do we think its necessary) we decided to spice things up a little this year by constructing a little trail of chocolate “eggs” to the Easter Basket. It should be no surprise that Pigsten discovered the first “egg.”

From there Pig honed in on something different around the Yoga corner – an area he is very familiar with.

Valentino was next, with an “egg” hidden behind our TV.

Tristen and Pigsten then used their T-Rex senses to tag-team against a “regg” hidden in some papers on the printer.

Pigsten then hopped over to my office chair (the boy can jump) and noticed something:

Pig sealed the deal, finding the “egg” on a bottle of pills [no pills were consumed].

Next Pigsten found one on top of the paper shredder – yea, though it might appear dangerous, that shredder has been broken for quite some time and no one really knows why we still have it.

From there Valentino took us into the hallway.

Tristen, not one to be left behind, spotted the next “regg” near the bedroom door.

Pigsten was quick to jump back on the trail at that point.

Pig joined the final-stretch fray as well.

Soon enough, the Boys were at the last “regg.”

And from there they dived into their basket to find more treats – this after eating all the “reggs” they’d found of course.

Their basket consisted of cookies and coffee, neither of which lasted very long.

While they didn’t arrive on Easter the Boys also got some pressies from Grandma Reem’ in the form of some Alternative U.S. National Park Service stickers! They were very excited.

Unfortunately that was the end of super exciting things, at least for a little while. We then headed into the end of semester craziness which was sorted of foreshadowed in list form here. There were two cool things about the end of classes though. First, SB got to come to my second to last class, Mediation, which she – I – and the professor really enjoyed (given SB’s profession). Second, my last class at Harvard Law took place in the same building – Austin Hall (though sadly not same room, though it was the room right next to it) as my first “class” during orientation (lol at my first mention of orientation being in the middle of a Beer Blurb, quite fitting – though in fairness I also discuss it here). After class some people from my Section had a champagne toast, it was cold and rainy, but that didn’t dampen our spirits, or the actual spirits.

So those things were nifty, especially the SB visit. It had been since 2012 that we had last sat in a classroom together for the purposes of learning.

Of course the end of classes does not mean the end of projects, plus it also only signifies the start of exams. So, what is a not-so-little-ole’ Taco to do? Go get beer, immediately.

Lots of beer, continuous beer.

In law school: Not even your beer can escape the fact that you are in law school.

And then comes studying. Whether or not “studying” means studying the law, or reading out of our Gravity Galls journal is a matter of debate.

Eventually though I had to burn the midnight oil, or rather, midnight candle. Which also meant that I had to watch Pigsten – the boy is oddly obsessed with flinging himself into open flames (maybe he is Zoroastrian?).

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a “crammer” – a style which doesn’t work as well in law school as it does elsewhere. That said, it hasn’t stopped me from finishing things like outlines the night before a closed morning exam, and this was no exception.

But hey, like I said – beer.

The next day, after my first exam (4.5 hours long) I was wondering around the law school and found some signage about all the stress relief stuff going on. You know, I’ve never actually used any of these services (not even the massage, shocking, until you remember how anti-social I am), but it’s nice to know they exist.

The good news was that I only had two exams this semester. One, in-class, closed, 4.5 hour exam – and one take-home, open, 12 hour exam. The in-class exam was for Federal Courts and the Federal System, which was just about as exciting as it sounds (and also quite difficult to boot). The take-home exam was for First Amendment, which is currently being erased by Cheeto Benito, so joke’s on me for taking that one. Anyways, “Fed Courts” was – along with my ever lingering group project – to be the hardest point in my exam period, so it was nice having that over first. Plus, I was even further ahead than I thought I would be because I had experienced a weird super-Taco period of focus the prior weekend and had managed to nearly finish my research paper for another class. Which was awesome, as that brought me down to: Detail work on said research paper, unknown amount of work on a group project (turned out to be a lot), misc. RA & journal work (see top of post), and one 12 hour exam before I was done, and the more I got done sooner, the better!

Why the rush? Well obviously it’s better to be done than not done, but more specifically, Meem was coming to visit! In fact, Meem arrived the night of the same day I took my Fed Courts exam, so I switched into law school “off” mode for a few days in the middle of the exam period, which caused my inbox to inflate to 87 unread messages, but I didn’t care (truth be told a lot of those are now deleted without ever having been read). Meem’s flight got delayed, but we still managed to be in bed by 1am, which is good for us, especially since SB had work the next day.

I also had a morning meeting on campus the next day, so Meem followed me to campus and did a self-tour. After I was out of my meeting I took her to some of the places she hadn’t been able to see before, such as the Ames Courtroom:

As well as the inside of Langdell Hall (law school library). It was technically exam period and you’re not supposed to have guests, so it was mostly us walking in silence to the few places where you can talk, but I think Meem still got some good photos.

We also noticed that the fountain in the Science Center Plaza had finally been activated! After 3.5 years of wondering and waiting, the fountain was on! We had never seen it on before – ever. In fact, “long” ago while searching to see if it even was a fountain, I found out that it has a name – Tanner Fountain – though I couldn’t find any evidence as to why it hadn’t been turned on in at least 3.5 years. Other than the mention of needing “some significant restoration” in a Harvard Gazette article, I could find nothing. So, coupled with recent renovations to the Science Center itself, I’m guessing they finally finished these restorations (though I never visibly saw them working on the fountain). Either way, it’s alive again, and hopefully it lasts through the summer!

I was so excited I had to text this photo SB at work.

Now, as excited as I was about the fountain, the big event of the day was going to see the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees at Fenway Park! SB and I hadn’t done this – and to not do so seems kind of like a failure for someone who lives in the Boston area America. SB had been to like 45 billion MLB games before, I’d been to one, and Meem to none. The Boys got a private clubhouse courtesy of Clifford, but Pigsten decided to go “slumming” with us common folk down in the Loge Boxes, which turned out to be really good seats – courtesy of Meem!

Pigsten enjoying some pre-game popcorn!

While the weather hadn’t been great, it was “decent” that day, in that – while cold – it didn’t rain at least. The worst part was when the sun initially went down and the wind kind of picked up, but after awhile (maybe it was those $10 beers?) it wasn’t too bad. At the very least it wasn’t too much for Pigsten, and, like Tristen, he is cold-sensitive.

As mentioned we had pretty good seats, here is a no-zoom panorama of where we were at. Meem got some better photos with her real camera, but you get the basic idea.

As for the game itself, the Red Sox lost, and not only did they lose, they didn’t score once. Plus, the Yankees – who obviously won – didn’t hit a home run. So it wasn’t really the most exciting game of baseball, even by baseball standards – which are like, in the same realm as “paint drying” 90% of the time. HOWEVER, it wasn’t really about the game, as much as the experience of going to Fenway (oldest MLB ballpark) to see the Red Sox against the Yankees. Or, as I put it, “When the Sox and the Yankees play the winner is always… America.”

So, all that considered, it was a great time with mah peeps. I think we all enjoyed it. I don’t know if Pigsten even knows what baseball is, but he liked the popcorn AND because we were Fenway newblets we all got little “Fan Packs” which included Fenway Dirt – yes, though they were technically for SB and I, the bags are now Pigsten’s.

Of course he let Grandma Reem’ keep her dirt, cause Grandma Reem’.

The GOSOX Citgo Sign (it’s a special sign) sticker technically didn’t come in our newb packs, but since I found it on the ground in Fenway it’s kind of like the Park wanted me to have it anyways.

So that was our cool sports experience. SB and I probably would have done it even if Meem hadn’t been able to come out. But we definitely wouldn’t have had as good of seats, nor would Meem have been there, so it was a lot better this way.

Speaking of other cool sports experiences, HLS has its own box at TD Garden and they were offering Celtics playoff tickets for said box…

…but I didn’t take them (I can hear the distant anal clenches from Daryl 2), because 1 – I’d already seen the Celtics, and 2 – the tickets were still $65 a piece. Definitely not bad for box tickets to an NBA playoff game, but still more than the $10 per ticket I paid Harvard for the pleb tickets the first time around.

But back on the Meem visit front, in addition to going out and about we also had a few nights in where we made things such as a salmon dinner (much to Valentino’s great pleasure) as well as chocolate avocado cake (don’t knock it until you try it). We also broke out some cards and board game. Now, this isn’t just any ole’ board game – this is a board which spent a good deal of its existence banned from production.

Yes, Ghettopoly, a game which involves “buying stolen properties, pimpin’ hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees and getting car jacked are some of the elements of the game. Not dope enough?…If you don’t have the money that you owe to the loan shark you might just land yourself in da’ Emergency Room.” Truth be told, I’ve had this game (courtesy of Meem) for years. In fact I don’t know how long I’ve had it, but Wikipedia says it came out in 2003, so based on subsequent lawsuits my guess is that it wasn’t long after that. That said, I’ve never actually played it. For one, “Ghettopoly” isn’t really the kind of Monopoly you bust out with new friends, or most people for that matter. So it’s kind of a niche version of a definitely-not-niche game. However, Tristen had been begging to play it for years, so it seemed fitting to bust it out when Grandma Meem was out. It was fun, though arguably more difficult than standard Monopoly due to increased penalties (the cost of the “Emergency Room,” for instance, is 250% higher than “Jail.”). It was a heated Ghettopoly bout, with SB taking an early lead, but I pompified and ended up winning in the end (the Boys were on my side and Pigsten probably ate some money in the process, I mean literally ate it).

The next day we all went out for a walking tour of parts of Cambridge. Meem wanted to see Tory Row, so we took off in that direction to start. However, on the way we took a peak inside Memorial Hall since Meem had never been in, and while Sanders Theatre and Anneberg Hall were closed off to visitors (as usual) we did get to see the main chamber with zero people in it – not a common occurrence given Harvard’s status as a tourist attraction.

After Meem took a peek into Anneberg Hall (it was lunch time for the babies) we headed down into Loker Commons (basement) and then on to Tory Row. While I’ve been up Tory Row at least three times before, one thing I had not done was explore Longfellow House – the longtime home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and before that the headquarters for General George Washington from 1775-76.

The interior wasn’t open for the season yet, but the front gate to the grounds were open, so we meandered around a bit. Meem saw a sign for the gardens and headed straight for it, turns out Longfellow House is “hiding” a very nice little garden area behind it next to the Carriage House. It wasn’t the nicest of days, but a lot of the flowers were in bloom in spite of the lackluster spring weather, so it was still pretty.

Despite having some classes with business school students, doing HBX CORe, and just generally not living that far away from it – I’d never been to the business school (though I’d spent many nights standing at their edge of their campus waiting for a bus after football or hockey games). So this was a first for all of us.

They have quite a nice campus, and some of the trees were bloom which made it even nicer.

The inside of Spangler Center and Bloomberg Center (yep those Bloombergs) was really nice, and had some similar design features to the law school’s Wasserstein Hall, which I guess isn’t totally surprising.

After we were done being B-school tourists (so I’ve now seen the medical school and business school – maybe I’ll see the law school someday) we moseyed over to the Harvard Stadium – which, not only were the grounds unlocked, the stadium itself was open, which was a nice surprise. Naturally I did what any normal person would do and immediately tried to figure out how to get the normally-sealed-off roof of the coliseum stadium. Unfortunately someone had predicted my endeavor and shut me down by chaining and padlocking the only way to the roof (absent flight or Spider-Man abilities).

This was as close as I could get.

The next logical step was to go play on the field, duh. So we did.

We even got some photos of me, me+SB, and me+Meem, right on the 50 yard line, they will come in handy should I ever need to lie about being an Ivy League Football Player.

After that we proceeded back over into Cambridge where we engaged what has quickly become a visiting family tradition: Legal Sea Foods.

Ever since SB, Meem, and I ate here back in the before times, we’ve ate here with nearly every round of family that has visited – though oddly enough never on our own (we stick to things like poor people fish in cardboard boxes). It’s really yummy – obviously – or we wouldn’t keep going back. This time around I mixed things up a bit by getting the lobster bisque rather than the clam chowder.

Of course that is just a way of saying that I also got clam chowder by eating some of SB’s. Both were delicious. For the main course I had (more) beer + scallops. I love scallops, though rarely get them due to cost. Paired with my scallops were mushrooms with rivaled Little Zagreb’s as well as a crispy risotto cake, which was as good as it sounds.

After our delicious late lunch, we headed up into the northern part of Harvard Yard to show Meem the place where half the world’s wealth will descend the first part of my graduation will take place (as of this getting posted – in just 13 days!). Meem took lots of photos of the buildings she hadn’t seen, I took a photo of a squirrel.

All was well in the world.

Sadly, all good things must end, and the next morning Meem had to fly back home, SB had to go to work, and I had to return to school. The Boys were upset Grandma Reem’ had to leave, though they were all happy with their pressies from her:

Tristen obtained a Harvard Law gavel, and immediately proceeded to beat the piss out of everyone with it until Grandma Reem’ intervened – he’s been good since (though Valentino took up the whacking work for awhile [don’t ask about his wrist slapper, JFC] – Grandma Reem’ shut that down as well). Pig obtained a wood carving of Ganesha that he now meditates and does yoga with. Valentino got a Harvard Law School snowflake ornament. Between the two of us, I don’t think he cares about the HLS part, he just loves ornaments and snowflakes. And, not to be forgotten, Pigsten got his aforementioned Fenway Dirt (two bags, no less). Good grandma Reem’ pressies all around.

Once Meem was on her way and SB at work, I set about the bloody business of the day, which happened to involve wrapping up my research paper for good, trying to wrap up my group project (silly me), and studying for the 12 hour exam I had the following day. I accomplished two of those three things, if you guessed the group project was not one of them, then you are someone who is familiar with collegiate group projects – as well as right. Nah, that group project would extend would extend itself to the literal final hours of the formal semester for 3Ls. As reference, per our team agreement it was supposed to have been done over two weeks prior – but, well, again group projects, if you understand, you understand. The good news is that a few of us managed to pull it all together, while simultaneously throwing the other team members under the bus (as they deserved, long story, just trust me) so it was still in on time. So it was productive last week.

Though oddly, my end* to law school (see italic note at the top of the post) was not the BANG I expected. But rather, law school sort of went out as silently as any huge life milestone conceivably might. But that is for a future post wherein I will discuss being done with Harvard Law School – this post is more about the lead-up. Plus, to make things even more anti-climatic, I went from submitting my last assignment, straight into an optometrist appointment where I was told they’d need to dilate my eyes (they did not tell me about this beforehand) in order to check up on a potential optic-nerve condition I am at risk for developing (I’m still a-ok, for reference!). So, not knowing this was coming, I had no sunglasses, so I got to rock those shitty roll up sunglasses they give you through CVS, Harvard Square, and Harvard Yard. Actually I couldn’t care less about the appearance, it just sucked being unable to read or use my computer for like 5 hours after being done with law school. It was also pouring rain, like pouring, so SB just brought food home rather than us going out. WOO Taco knows how to celebrate em.’

So, as has become a sort of Dinosaur Bear tradition (see 1L & 2L) here is picture of one of the Boys next to my stack of materials for the semester – which, as usual, does not include casebooks or the 80 F*CKING MILLION PAGES from my group project class. 🙂

Yes that little itty-bitty booklet thing on top is the United States Constitution, yep, that thing you like you pretend you’ve read (or maybe that was just me). Look how teeny it is, seriously go read it.

So, that brings us up to the present! If you were wondering about my first dentist appointment in 3.5 years, no – it had nothing to do with the fact that last time I was in an office it involved having my wisdom teeth removed and anesthetics not working and having one tooth drilled out without pain medicine (I recommend it, loads of fun). To be fair, that was technically the second to last time, as the last time was a follow up. Anyways, no, I’m not scared of dentists, I just don’t really think I need to go to them as frequently as they say I do. Sure 3.5 years is a stretch, but I have no dental insurance. Rather, the dentist was rather just a “catch up” I’ve been doing post law school exams. I also went to (as mentioned) the optometrist for a checkup (my eyes didn’t get worse during law school!) and my general practitioner for a checkup. You know, the whole “not dying” sort of stuff that you don’t do during law school.

Outside from that I’ve also being working quite extensively on what comes next, as well as starting (e.g. being really behind on) to study for the bar, but those are topics for another post, which will come at some point after I close out law school, be it via one combined Graduation + “Muh Feels” post, or two independent posts. We’ll see how I feel, though it will probably be two posts because, I’m also taking a quick trip to New Orleans after graduation as my version of a super-mini (drastically preemptive) bar trip (as comparison SB got to all the way to the frickin’ arctic circle when she graduated – and she doesn’t have to deal with the bar 😛 ).

Aight’ – I think that’s all I have for now. See you on the flip side o’ graduation. Also Dinosaur Bear is almost 5 years old – and it’s almost my birthday as well. Dat’s crazy.